Spain and the World

Spain and the World was a fortnightly anti-fascist journal which was launched in London in December 1936 by Francesco Galasso, an Italian physician, and Vernon Richards (originally Vero Benvenuto Costantino Recchioni), a student who was to become a trained civil engineer. Galasso and Richards launched the journal to counteract the political biases of the News Chronicle and the New Statesman, both of which supported Soviet policy during the Spanish Civil War.

The local context for the launch of Spain and the World was a diaspora of Italian anti-fascists in London in which Galasso was prominent. He had welcomed Emma Goldman, who was a friend of Enrico Malatesta, into his house and had edited Il Comento (1922-1924), a weekly satirical magazine which 'was one of the few explicitly anti-Fascist periodicals in London'. The group used to meet up with other anti-fascist Italians in and outside London at the delicatessen of Emilio Recchioni, the satirically-named King Bomba, in Old Compton Street, Soho. Recchioni was an anarchist friend of Malatesta and Richards' father.

Richards was to become the editor of Spain and the World. However, before the first issue was published it had a forerunner - a 32-page pamphlet on Spain, The struggle for liberty in Spain 1840-1936, that was published by the Narod Press in Whitechapel, in East London, which was owned by Israel Narodiczky. When Spain and the World was published, the first twelve issues were printed by V.W.H. Printers Ltd, which printed a number of provincial weeklies in Faringdon (then in Berkshire).

The proprietor of V.W.H. Printers Ltd was Robert Henriques, who was later to become Colonel R.D.Q. Henriques, a much-decorated soldier, and a successful author, novelist and biographer.